tinued to claim their victims. So far it was labour in vain. But the
letter remains, to speak for ever for the courage of Latimer; and to speak
something, too, for a prince that could respect the nobleness of the poor
yeoman's son, who dared in such a cause to write to him as a man to a man.
To have written at all in such a strain was as brave a step as was ever
deliberately ventured. Like most brave acts, it did not go unrewarded; for
Henry remained ever after, however widely divided from him in opinion, his
unshaken friend.

In 1531, the king gave him the living of West Kingston, in Wiltshire, where
for a time he now retired. Yet it was but a partial rest. He had a special
licence as a preacher from Cambridge, which continued to him (with the
king's express sanction)[567] the powers which he had received from Wolsey.
He might preach in any diocese to which he was invited; and the repose of a
country parish could not be long allowed in such stormy times to Latimer.
He had bad health, being troubled with headache, pleurisy, colic, stone;
his bodily constitution meeting feebly the demands which he was forced to
make upon it.[568] But he struggled on, travelling up and down to London,
to Kent, to Bristol, wherever opportunity called him; marked for
destruction by the bishops, if he was betrayed into an imprudent word, and
himself living in constant expectation of death.[569]

At length the Bishop of London believed that Latimer was in his power. He
had preached at St. Abb's, in the city, "at the request of a company of
merchants,"[570] in the beginning of the winter of 1531; and soon after his
return to his living, he was informed that he was to be cited before
Stokesley. His friends in the neighbourhood wrote to him, evidently in
great alarm, and more anxious that he might clear himself, than expecting
that he would be able to do so;[571] he himself, indeed, had almost made up
his mind that the end was coming.[572]

The citation was delayed for a few weeks. It was issued at last, on the
10th of January, 1531-2,[573] and was served by Sir Walter Hungerford, of
Farley.[574] The offences with which he was charged were certain "excesses
and irregularities" not specially defined; and the practice of the bishops
in such cases was not to confine the prosecution to the acts committed; but
to draw up a series of articles, on which it was presumed that the
orthodoxy of the accused person was open to suspicion, and to question him